Amazon.com to Close Distribution Centers in Three States

Amazon.com Inc. is shutting distribution centers in three states, and will lay off or transfer to other nearby facilities about 210 employees, the company said Thursday.

Seattle-based Amazon said it is closing the centers in Munster, Ind., Red Rock, Nev., and Chambersburg, Pa., to balance out its operations. "We continue to evaluate the network and all parts of the business to make sure we are positioning ourselves for future growth," said company spokesman Craig Berman.

Amid the recession, the e-commerce company has so far managed to avoid the major sales declines faced by many traditional retailers. In the fourth quarter of last year, its sales surged 18% and profit rose 9%.

Amazon opened the facility in Munster a year and a half ago. Last year it added three million square feet of new distribution space, bringing its total in North America to 12 million square feet.

The company plans to add 300,000 square feet to an existing center in Phoenix later this year, to process large items including patio furniture and televisions.

Amazon's chief executive Jeffrey Bezos spent last week working at a distribution center in Lexington, Ky.

As of Dec. 31, the company had 20,700 employees.
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Understanding How Earth's Biological Systems Respond to and Influence Its Physical and Chemical Conditions


As a result of global climate change, Earth and its systems are undergoing rapid alterations. To adapt to changes happening at unprecedented rates, according to scientists, we must study how the interrelated geosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere interact with each other.

In the 21st century, we will make the choices that affect the most basic relationships between humans and the planet on which we live, say James Collins, National Science Foundation (NSF) assistant director for biological sciences, and Tim Killeen, NSF assistant director for geosciences.

How will we accommodate our needs, while maintaining the functions of the natural systems on which the future of the globe, and with it our existence, depend?

The challenge will be met, in large part, through basic research, Collins and Killeen state.

To further our understanding of Earth's biogeochemical cycles, including the water cycle, and to develop environmental models that link local, regional and global scales, NSF's directorates for biological sciences (BIO) and geosciences (GEO) have announced a focus on interdisciplinary research that bridges the biological sciences and geosciences.

The directorates have issued Dear Colleague letters to the scientific community encouraging increased research in the areas of multi-scale modeling and emerging topics in biogeochemical cycles.

Especially sought are projects, to be jointly supported by core programs in BIO and GEO, that focus on the interactions and thresholds in climate, ecological and/or hydrologic systems.

"The goal is to increase our understanding of how biological systems respond to changing physical and chemical conditions," says Collins, "and how biological systems influence the physical and chemical characteristics of soils and sediments, air and water."

Adds Killeen, "These emerging and challenging problems require integration of concepts and observations across diverse fields. Projects funded via these Dear Colleague letters have the potential to dramatically improve our understanding of how small- and large-scale processes lead to 'tipping points,' such as those in Earth's climate system."

Projects will develop theoretical foundations for the modeling and simulation of existing data, and data collected by the new and envisioned NSF environmental observatories, such as the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), EarthScope, Critical Zone Observatories and others.

The information will be used to predict what will happen on Earth in the years and decades ahead.

In order to adapt to a changing world, and to mitigate changes that have already occurred, such knowledge, say Killeen and Collins, is critical.

Five Things About Kepler

Here are some quick facts about the Kepler mission, scheduled to launch March 6, 2009:

-- Kepler is the world's first mission with the ability to find true Earth analogs -- planets that orbit stars like our sun in the "habitable zone." The habitable zone is the region around a star where the temperature is just right for water -- an essential ingredient for life as we know it -- to pool on a planet's surface.

-- By the end of Kepler's three-and-one-half-year mission, it will give us a good idea of how common or rare other Earths are in our Milky Way galaxy. This will be an important step in answering the age-old question: Are we alone?

-- Kepler detects planets by looking for periodic dips in the brightness of stars. Some planets pass in front of their stars as seen from our point of view on Earth; when they do, they cause their stars to dim slightly, an event Kepler can see.

-- Kepler has the largest camera ever launched into space, a 95-megapixel array of charge-coupled devices, or CCDs, like those in everyday digital cameras.

-- Kepler's telescope is so powerful that, from its view up in space, it could detect one person in a small town turning off a porch light at night.

Display Monitor

Most display monitors today are capable of displaying images in various screen resolutions, all of which are suitable for viewing passport and visa images. These monitors also display images in a wide variety of colors. However, an image can look quite different when viewed on various display monitors, in terms of both screen resolution and image quality. For this reason, it is important to set the monitor''s settings to the manufacturer''s default values to view the image in the most appropriate manner. For more accurate color-matching, check that the calibration of your monitor is correct. If necessary, use the monitor''s control panel to fine-tune its color adjustments; for instance, to set the monitor''s color temperature to 6500 ºK to approximate daylight. For even greater color accuracy, the stored image can be converted to and displayed in a device-independent color space by using standard image display software. This removes the color bias of the specific display monitor and will more accurately represent the way the image should actually appear.